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Hottest start to a calendar year on record

NASA updated their global temperature data for April and it's hot. Really hot. As in the last time it was this hot may well be the Holocene Climatic Optimum. April 2014 shattered April 2010's record by a full 0.24ºC, coming in at 1.11ºC above the 1951-1980 baseline. That is, simply put, jaw-dropping.

This now makes seven straight months of record-breaking global temperatures and marks the hottest 12-month period on record (previous record set in March 2016) and the hottest four-month start to a calendar year on record.

It's not even close. 2016 is obliterating all previous records and doing so by record margins. The first four months of 2016 came in at 1.215ºC above the baseline. The previous record-holders were 2010 and 2015, which tied at 0.8275ºC. The first four months of 2016 were so warm that even at this early date, we can all but call the race for hottest year on record, as there is a 93.7% chance 2016 will dethrone 2015.

Average yearly temperature versus the average temperature for the first four months of each year. The red dot is 2016 and the error bars represent 2 standard deviations around that point.

To get that percentage, I regressed the yearly average temperature against the temperature for the first four months. As you can see, it's a pretty good fit (R2 = 0.9495). I then found the standard deviation of the residuals and calculated the z-score between the predicted yearly average for 2016 (0.996ºC) and the actual average for 2015 (0.8275ºC). So congrats, 2016. May you reign long as the new starting point for deniers' claim of "No warming since _____!"

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Recently, a right-wing cousin of mine shared a meme claiming that
global temperatures were unchanged between 1996 and 2016, specifically
that global temperatures were 14.83ºC (58.7ºF) in both 1996 and 2016.

I call BS and here's why.

First
and most obviously, 2016 isn't even half over. Stating that the mean
temperature in 2016 was 14.83ºC (58.7ºF) is a bit premature.

Second,
whoever came up with that meme has extreme difficulty with basic
statistical terms. Here's a hint: "Average mean temperature" is
nonsense. As used in everyday speech, it's essentially the same as
saying "average average temperature" or "mean mean temperature." Now,
for those who understand statistics, I know that the mean is technically
a specific method for calculating the average but in general usage,
mean and average are interchangeable—and whoever came up with that meme
was abjectly ignorant of that fact.